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Posts Tagged remix

REMIX SONGS

Inayet Ullah

There are four fine arts: literature, music, painting and sculpture. If dancing is included as a fine art the number of fine arts is five. Of all the fine arts, perhaps music (both vocal as well as instrumental) is the profoundest of all the art forms for expression of human emotion. Literature would be second and others follow as third, fourth and fifth.

Some animals, especially birds, are found to have positive effect of music on them. Researches show that even plants and flowers are affected by music. Human beings are the creators as well as beneficiaries of music It has the deepest and pleasantest effect on our mood than any other art form. Music is my passion and I enjoy it whenever I have a chance to listen to a good piece.

When I heard, for the first time, a re-mix song, I was surprised and shocked. At first I was drowned in the deafening noise of the music, at times the singer’s voice hardly audible in the noise. When I recovered, I realized that if I continuously hear this music for a few weeks, I am likely to run the risk of damaging my ear drums. What is remix? A re-mix song is a piece of song which has been altered from its original state by adding, removing and/changing pieces, of the item. Usually, the makers of re-mix song choose a good, famous and popular song by an outstanding singer and change it in the aforesaid manner and the result is a distorted version of a good piece of art which is also a deplorable plagiarism.

I tried to listen to a couple of other renderings of re-mix songs but it made my feelings no less disgusting. Its not actually merely disgusting but a mixed feeling of disgust and pain to hear a thing of beauty being maimed.

A short while ago a qawwali, which was originally performed by the late Ghulam Sabri Qawwal and others, was shown in an Indian movie and the singing was performed by some present Indian singers. Since it was included in the movie without getting proper permission from the original singers, and since the original singer is no more living, at least the permission should have been sought from his living son Amjad Sabri. His son, upon knowing this, was greatly upset and, at that time, was thinking of resorting to start legal proceedings against the perpetrators.

One can borrow a theme or an idea from a song and create something new. There are many songs on the love affair between Moghal prince Saleem and Anarkali yet every song is rendered by the singer in his/her own way. A number of singers sing the same particular famous ghazal of the same poet, but everyone of them do so in his/her own particular style. But to “change” an existing song of a famous singer, in the name of remix, is ununderstandable. If the makers of remix are talented enough to transform a good old song into a better song than original one, then why don’t they create new songs of their own.

I wish and hope that these makers of remix ponder over this matter and do something better than this unnecessary waste of time, energy and “talent”.

A question that comes to mind is why on earth should they do this? May be, they would say they want to do better. Okay, fine! Go ahead and do it. Create something new which is your own. But where is the necessity of choosing a great song of a great singer and blatantly distorting it. This is sort of plagiarism. It should be illegal and should not be permissible. The act of “remix” is actually a mix-up of a good thing and creating a mess out of it.